Judge Rules Government Covered Up Lies on Panel

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: December 19, 1997

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18—
A Federal judge said today that the White House and the Justice Department had participated in a ''reprehensible'' effort to cover up false statements by Ira C. Magaziner, the chief architect of President Clinton's ill-fated health plan, and the judge ordered the Government to pay a penalty of more than $285,000.

The judge said Mr. Magaziner and the Clinton Administration had been ''dishonest'' in describing the secret procedures used to develop the President's health care proposals in 1993. Mr. Magaziner said at the time that the proposals were devised entirely by a group of Federal employees, who were not subject to laws requiring open meetings or public disclosure of their working papers.

In the ruling today, the climax of five years of litigation between doctors and the Clinton Administration, Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court said: ''It is clear that the decisions here were made at the highest levels of Government, and the Government itself is -- and should be -- accountable when its officials run amok. There were no rogue lawyers here misleading this court.''

Rather, Judge Lamberth said, ''the executive branch of the Government, working in tandem, was dishonest with this court, and the Government must now face the consequences of its misconduct.''

The Administration's efforts to correct the misstatements were feeble and belated, the judge said.

Joe Lockhart, a White House spokesman, said the Administration had no comment on the ruling. Hillary Rodham Clinton supervised work on the President's health plan, but Judge Lamberth did not say whether either of them was in any way responsible for the Government's misconduct.

Mr. Magaziner, who still works at the White House, also refused to comment on the ruling. But in an interview tonight, Mr. Magaziner said, ''My statements were honest, and I did not attempt to mislead anybody.''

Judge Lamberth said ''the Department of Justice succumbed to pressure from White House attorneys'' and ''never corrected any of the factual inaccuracies'' in Mr. Magaziner's sworn statements to the court.

''The most outrageous conduct by the Government in this case is what happened when it never corrected or updated the Magaziner declaration,'' the judge said, and he added:

''It seems that some Government officials never learn that the cover-up can be worse than the underlying conduct. Most shocking to this court, and deeply disappointing, is that the Department of Justice would participate in such conduct.''

After concluding that the Administration had acted in bad faith, Judge Lamberth declared, ''This type of conduct is reprehensible, and the Government must be held accountable for it.''

He ordered the Government to pay $285,864 to one of the plaintiffs, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, to cover lawyers' fees and other costs. The money will presumably come from the Federal Treasury, not from the personal bank accounts of Administration officials.

The case has a tangled history. Mr. Clinton created the Task Force on National Health Care Reform on Jan. 25, 1993, five days after he took office. The panel conducted its work in secret. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the American Council for Health Care Reform, a consumer group, and the National Legal and Policy Center, a foundation that promotes ethics in government, filed suit in February 1993 to gain access to meetings and records of the task force.

Mr. Magaziner told the court in March 1993 that all members of the task force and its staff working groups were Federal employees, so they did not have to hold open meetings or divulge their working papers.

In fact, Judge Lamberth said, the working groups included scores of people from private industry, including managed care executives with potential conflicts of interest.

The Administration offered to open the records of Mrs. Clinton's task force in September 1994, but ''the White House did not fulfill its promises'' until it was forced to do so, after several months of prodding by the plaintiffs, Judge Lamberth said.

After unsuccessful efforts to settle the lawsuit, the Administration decided to release most of the documents prepared by the task force, avoiding the need for a trial. The first documents were made available in September 1994, two weeks after Mr. Clinton's health plan died in Congress.

In August 1995, Federal prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges against Mr. Magaziner, who said at the time that he had been exonerated.

At the White House, Mr. Magaziner now studies commercial uses of cyberspace and the Internet.